Various stock trading and order execution mechanisms have been proposed. Examples include the mechanisms described in the following patent documents.
United States Patent Application 2005/0075965 relates to a securities market and market maker activity tracking system and method. More particularly, this application relates to a method, system and computer program to monitor securities market activity to seek out imbalances in market activity that could lead to a price change in a particular security. Level 1 and/or level 2 data is analyzed to track the activity of market makers and to derive indicators of momentary upward or downward price pressure. The indicators associated with each selected security can be displayed to a user.
United States Patent Application 2004/0148242 relates to a method and system for intelligent automated security trading via the Internet. More particularly, this application relates to a method and system for intelligent automated security trading via the Internet, which provides an Automated Trading Service Center (ATSC), offering a Home Page Service and managing at least one Virtual Fund Manager (VFM) system. The ATSC is a wireless e-commerce service center providing automated trading services to investors anytime anywhere. By accessing the HPS, the investor can interact with ATSC to develop a custom investment strategy based personal VFM system to automatically trade electronic trading based securities. The VFM is a real time running program incorporated by four engines: the Quote Processing Engine, the Decision Making Engine, the Order Execution Engine, and the Order Processing Engine. Under commands of ATSC server, the VFM can periodically retrieve quotation from the security exchange, monitor the market fluctuation by performing intensive calculations to detect the desired Buy/Sell timing as predetermined by investor's proprietary investment strategy algorithms, and ultimately execute the transaction automatically.
United States Patent Application 2004/0024690 relates to a volume limitation method and system for a real-time computerized stock trading system. More particularly, as provided for in this application a system controls the volume of trading for an individual investor for a given stock and protects against market domination in real-time computerized stock trading systems. These stock trading systems may provide trading environments that do not have sufficient liquidity and may thus be susceptible to market domination due to large trade orders placed typically by large institutions or users with great resources. The system determines a volume limit and rejects or flags new trade orders that make a user's total trading volume for a certain stock exceed the determined volume limit.
United States Patent Application 2003/0101128 relates to a state tracking system for a basket trading system. More particularly, this application relates to a tracking system that includes an order tracking database that stores the status of orders as they are processed within a distributed order fulfillment system that has a number of order execution systems that fill all or part of each order. Each order goes through a number of different transaction stages and the result of each stage is reported as an event to the database. The events are transmitted as messages using an output queue in the order execution system and an event message queue in an event tracking service. The tracking service updates the database when events appear in the event queue. The message processing system operates independently of order processing allowing order processing to continue while the tracking service updates the database. The messages include the components of an asset record of a core system database. The status of any order within the distributed system can be obtained from the database. The system also includes execution confirmation and error tracking with corresponding centralization of this information.
United States Patent Application 2002/0184237 relates to methods and apparatus for compiling, processing and disseminating equity transaction data. More particularly, this application provides a system for distributing data describing trading activity occurring on a plurality of different Electronic Communications Networks (ECNs), each of which receives buy and sell orders from stock traders and each of which performs equity sales transactions based on the received orders. Live data fed from each ECN describing pending buy and sell orders and executed transactions on each exchange are reformatted into standard form and aggregated to create, update and maintain consolidated trading data that is stored in a database. In response to one or more request specifications received from a remotely located user, the system extracts and processes selected portions of the consolidated data to produce response data returned to the requestor. This requested data may include streaming ticker tape and stock status data describing the status of all or a selected subset of stocks being actively traded on the multiple ECNs; an index value representative of the current selling price of a predetermined group of securities being traded on the multiple ECNs, depth-of-book data describing the current best pending offers to buy and sell one or more selected securities, and news stories concerning the securities being traded, including artificially generated natural language text news which is automatically produced by items of consolidated ECN data that satisfies predetermined conditions which define “newsworthy” events.
United States Patent Application 2002/0152153 relates to a securities trading system, computer system, buy/sell order placement method, buy/sell order processing method, and program. More particularly, this application provides a securities trading system including a customer's PC 30 connected to the Internet 10, a securities company's site 20 which is connected to the Internet 10 and processes securities trading orders from the customer's PC 30, and an exchange's computer 50 connected to the securities company's site 20 via a leased line 40, wherein the securities company's site 20 provides information of a group order entry screen for entering an order covering multiple issues and their respective limit prices specified as a group, to the customer's PC 30, and after displaying the group order entry screen information provided by the securities company's site 20 in a browser 31, the customer's PC 30 outputs a group order covering a group of issues for which respective limit prices are specified, through the Internet 10.
United States Patent Application 2002/0138401 relates to a method and system for automatic execution of a securities transaction. More particularly, as provided for in this application a securities transaction, such as a buy or sell order is transmitted to a securities exchange with an indicator requesting automatic execution. In one embodiment, the securities transaction has a limit price and if the limit price is equal to or better than the current quote for the security on the exchange, the transaction is automatically executed without exposing the transaction to the auction market crowd on the exchange floor for possible price improvement. In another embodiment, the securities transaction is a market order, and if otherwise eligible, the transaction is automatically executed without exposing the transaction to auction market crowd on the exchange floor for possible price improvement.
Among those benefits and improvements that have been disclosed, other objects and advantages of this invention will become apparent from the following description taken in conjunction with the accompanying figures. The figures constitute a part of this specification and include illustrative embodiments of the present invention and illustrate various objects and features thereof.